Original subtitles

Today in China, archaeology is uncovering

a previously unknown ancient civilization,

a culture that left behind stunning treasures

of otherworldly bronze and glittering gold.

This gold is unlike anything I have ever seen before,

a long lost treasure buried for thousands of years.

And it's stirring up a massive mystery about the very origins

of one of the greatest and oldest

civilizations on Earth.

So, what was this lost kingdom?

How powerful and sophisticated were they?

Whoa!

That's incredible.

And can technology help us reveal how these new discoveries

change the story of ancient China.

I'm Sam Willis, an archaeologist

and expert in ancient civilizations,

and I'm going to investigate China's distant past

from a whole new perspective.

From above.

Today, state-of-the-art satellites

and specialized drones can reveal the Earth

in stunning detail

and detect hidden archaeology,

enabling us to recreate lost ancient worlds,

invisible to the naked eye.

Working alongside leading Chinese experts,

my team and I will travel to some of the country's

most remote and incredible landscapes

and with cutting-edge science,

investigate previously unknown cultures,

lost cities, and enduring legends.

This is ancient China as you've never seen it before.

One place has always dominated the story

of the very beginnings of ancient China.

The Yellow River.

Look anywhere in the world,

and rivers are always the lifeblood

of early civilizations.

The Nile in Egypt, the Tigris in Mesopotamia,

and the mighty Yellow River is the Nile of the east.

China's Yellow River is one of the longest on the planet,

weaving more than 3,000 miles through this vast country.

Its fertile banks gave rise to ancient cultures

and would conceal and preserve the incredible treasures

they created for thousands of years.

That's amazing!

These finds discovered in a place called Yinxu

are over 3,000 years old.

I was expecting maybe one or two pieces,

there are about 50 in there.

Yue Zhanwei is guardian of a whole array

of exquisite bronze treasures,

all created by China's very first recorded dynasty,

a sophisticated ancient civilization called the Shang.

This is a jug for alcohol.

So you pour the alcohol in here,

and then you use this vessel to drink it.

From ceremonial bowls to drinking vessels,

3,000 years ago,

this was cutting-edge design and technology.

It's surprisingly heavy.

It's a significant artifact, this.

They built things to last, these guys.

Discoveries like those of the Shang,

alongside others from even earlier Stone Age cultures,

once led experts to believe

this was where Chinese civilization all began.

But there's a mystery.

Far away from the Yellow River,

across a seemingly impenetrable mountain range,

new discoveries are being made

of a long-lost kingdom in the south,

that are turning everything we once thought we knew

on its head.

Now, with my team of experts, historian Douglas Flowe,

archaeologist Janice Li,

and tech team leader Zhang Jianwei,

we'll be working alongside Chinese archaeologists

to investigate this great mystery.

The site of our long-lost kingdom is called Sanxingdui.

And it's one of the most cutting-edge excavations

on the planet.

Within a forensically isolated hangar,

experts in protective suits are carefully unearthing

its spectacular remains.

Access is strictly controlled, but one of our team, Janice Li,

has been given special permission to join the dig.

Janice has worked for years

on China's famous Terracotta Warriors.

But the finds here are every bit as extraordinary.

It's so exciting.

They are taking some final pieces from the pit,

and it's very special to allow me to be involved.

So, what you're doing today is cleaning these

and taking them out layer by layer?

Yes, we've finished cleaning

the top layer.

We just need to extract the objects now.

The very first artifacts were unearthed here

almost a century ago, in 1929.

But it wasn't until the 1980s that finds were made

that began to really astonish Chinese experts.

A vast array of ancient wonders, hidden for thousands of years

since they were broken and buried in sacrificial pits.

Historian Douglas Flowe is heading

into the Sanxingdui Museum,

which houses some of the most extraordinary artifacts

to have been excavated so far.

Wow! Look at all this!

These stunning bronze treasures

were all found here at Sanxingdui.

This is amazing.

Carbon dating revealed they were cast around 3,000 years ago,

like those of the Shang.

But these designs are so unusual

they are unlike any other ancient artifact on Earth.

It looks almost like something out of a sci-fi film.

It looks kind of like an alien.

This one's really cool.

It looks like a superhero with this intricate headdress.

In all, almost 60 bronze heads.

And one in particular seems to hold a special power.

I think this one stands above them all.

You cannot avoid those eyes.

It has to have been something or someone very special.

Such striking protruding eyes have only ever been found

on these masks from Sanxingdui.

Even as finds continue to emerge from the earth today,

the meaning of these treasures

and the identity of the civilization

that created them still fascinates experts.

This is so, so amazing.

This is Sanxingdui protruding eye.

I saw this very special eye many times,

but I never held this piece of eye in my hand.

Utterly distinctive, these unique cylindrical eyes

must be a clue to our mystery civilization.

But what could they mean?

The Sanxingdui people seem obsessed with the eyes.

When we understand the mystery of eyes,

we may understand more about Sanxingdui people.

Then another incredible find emerges.

Hidden amongst the broken bronze,

glittering fragments of gold.

This is probably from a golden mask

or other part and pieces of golden objects.

It's so amazing.

The gold object is really valuable

and really, really rare.

Unlike many ancient cultures,

the Chinese usually cast their most important items in bronze.

But here at Sanxingdui, it seems gold was used

to create some very special wonders.

Wow, now this is really amazing.

A ceremonial staff, exquisitely decorated in gold leaf.

Resident archaeologist Xu Danyang suspects

that inscriptions on the staff could be significant.

We can see a complex pattern

on one end of the golden staff,

which includes four types of symbol.

One is a fish.

And one is a bird.

There's also an arrow through the fish.

And an image of a human face.

And there also seems to be a crown.

A suggestion that this could be a royal scepter.

Maybe the image represents a king.

Maybe it represents the oracles of the time

or other powerful people.

This piece is absolutely fascinating.

Just to imagine that it survived for so long.

And these symbols on the scepter, the fish,

the bird, the human face that possibly has a crown on it,

they're trying to tell us something.

This is our great mystery.

Just what was this civilization

that made such incredible treasures?

And how do they match up to China's first recorded dynasty,

the mighty Shang?

To hunt for answers, I need to go back to the Shang's homeland,

the Yellow River.

The Yellow River Valley has always been regarded

as a cradle of Chinese civilization.

It's called the Yellow River because of this stuff,

the sediment that gives its water that distinctive color.

It's the most sediment-laden river in the world,

and the fertile lands it creates

have played a hugely important part

in the development of early Chinese civilizations.

Long before the Ming Great Wall

or the iconic Terracotta Warriors,

China's first recorded dynasty emerged: the Shang.

I've seen the Shang's impressive bronze treasures.

Now I'm headed for the heart of the modern city of Zhengzhou,

because I've been told that the Shang also left behind

something much, much bigger.

Wow! Look at that!

Right in the middle of a city!

A huge ancient wall that dates all the way back

to the time of the Shang.

You can see that it's made of rammed earth,

that's earth layered on top of itself

and then hammered down until it's hard like concrete,

and it runs off in either direction for miles.

While the modern city has shot up all around,

this ancient wall has miraculously survived.

It's incredible to think that this wall has stood here strong

for 3,500 years.

Three stories high, it's an impressive sight even today.

But what was it for?

To answer that, we need to see it from space.

In satellite imagery, the true scale and shape of the wall

become apparent.

So we're standing here.

This is this section of wall, but you can see how it goes off

all the way around there and then turns a corner.

These are clearly the remains of the walls

of what was once a massive city.

From above, these city walls

form an almost rectangular shape.

And there's more,

because excavations have revealed evidence

of another outer city wall.

Altogether they encircle an area of nearly 10 square miles.

It's believed this was once

the Shang's grand capital.

Just think of the manpower,

the sheer effort it would have taken

to build walls on this scale back then.

It's a reminder that civilization

isn't just about emperors and kings.

It's about the toil of regular people

whose names have long been forgotten.

And this is their memorial.

I've seen the Shang's advanced bronze casting technology,

and now, evidence of their vast city.

A cornerstone of any civilization,

cities are an indication of social hierarchy

and centralized power.

That's why the Shang are considered the bedrock

of Chinese civilization.

It's not just their technology

or their treasures or their enduring traditions.

It's their megacity.

And it's still here, even after thousands of years

hiding in plain sight.

So what about our mystery civilization?

Hundreds of miles away from the cradle of the Yellow River,

far to the south...

...the excavations at Sanxingdui are revealing evidence

of advanced technology every bit a match for the Shang.

The question now is, did they have a city, too?

And if so, how did it compare to the Shang's mighty capital?

To investigate, I'm turning to our tech team.

Zhang Jianwei is preparing to scan the area

around where Sanxingdui's treasures have been found.

I was up here earlier, but it's very difficult

to make out exactly what's going on.

What's the best way of scanning this?

From the sky!

We're using a technology called LiDAR.

Millions of laser pulses are fired down to the ground

allowing us to create a model of the entire surface

with pinpoint accuracy.

They've just sent up the drone,

and it's always the most exciting moment,

because you never know what they're going to find.

What I'm hoping they'll find will absolutely transform

the way we think about this location.

Archaeologists here have previously identified

a series of raised areas

believed to be part of a settlement.

But LiDAR technology has never been deployed

over Sanxingdui before,

and if it works, it should reveal details

impossible to see with the naked eye.

After a full day's flying and several hours processing,

it's time to take my first look at what they've found.

Hi, guys! Hi.

What have we got?

Check this.

At first, the area looks like nothing more than patches

of scrubland and farmer's fields.

But the LiDAR allows us to tear away the vegetation,

to reveal something massive.

We are using the different colors to indicate

the different heights of the surface of the ground.

These huge banks are ancient earthworks.

There it is!

It's like we've gone back thousands of years.

You can suddenly see the landscape that's been hidden.

It's so clever.

It's an incredible amount of earth, isn't it?

Yes.

And in the data,

a stone's throw from where the treasures have been found,

more evidence of huge earthworks.

It's kind of come alive,

everything really kind of pops out.

Yes.

The very first LiDAR survey of Sanxingdui

is revealing several sections of raised ground.

And their size and length means they can only be one thing:

huge ancient walls.

From the scan, what are we seeing

in terms of scale of the walls?

It's about 164 feet on the bottom

and about 98 feet on the top.

That's massive, isn't it?

It's an incredible achievement.

So we've got four different bits of wall in different locations

and in different orientations.

That's a city, right?

Yes, definitely.

Our brand new data confirms that this civilization

also had a city, just like the Shang.

But how big was it?

And how powerful were they?

While the tech team widens their search,

I'm going to try to find out more

about the people who created it.

Treasures have been unearthed from Sanxingdui

for almost a century.

And its ancient ground continues to give up relics of the people

who lived here more than 3,000 years ago.

Clues to their lives, rituals and beliefs.

Have a look, this one.

So that's a small bronze bird hanging on the bottom.

It's very delicate, and it's really amazing.

Janice and Douglas are witness to exquisite finds

that challenge the traditional view that the Yellow River

was the sole birthplace of Chinese civilization.

And here at Sanxingdui, there are always new surprises.

If we use a flashlight to light it.

Oh, thank you.

Wow, that's beautiful.

She just found this, just now?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

This piece is really special.

We've found a small piece like this once before,

similar to jade.

And it was in the same place,

inside the throat of a mythical animal from pit number eight.

How amazing.

This is literally the first time

this piece of jade has seen daylight

since it was placed in there by someone

thousands of years ago.

Many beliefs of the Sanxingdui people remain unexplained.

But there's one remarkable artifact,

meticulously restored since its discovery over 30 years ago

that connects our mystery civilization

to an enduring Chinese legend.

Wow!

That's amazing.

I've never seen a bronze sculpture that large before.

It's got to be at least 20, 25 feet.

There's so many things to look at here.

There are birds on three different levels.

And then there are leaves

and possibly fruit hanging from the branches.

Wow, this is really amazing.

This appears to be some kind of tree of life,

a symbol found in many cultures all around the world,

including here in China,

where their version is called a Fusang tree.

According to legend, each day one of 10 sun crows

would travel around the world,

leaving the other nine resting in the Fusang tree.

And sitting in the branches of our bronze tree are nine birds.

Could the people of Sanxingdui have been

the original architects of a belief

that would become one of China's greatest legends?

So if this is a Fusang tree, is this the earliest Fusang tree?

Yes, it is!

This kind of seems like the beginning of a myth

that has evolved over thousands of years.

The story seems to have become

more and more well-known,

and it spread from Sanxingdui to other parts of China.

So now the story is heard everywhere.

Wow. That's amazing.

So, it seems the people from Sanxingdui

did leave their mark on Chinese culture.

Their influence was simply forgotten

and lost in the mists of time.

By piecing together broken fragments,

experts are gradually decoding the beliefs

and the lost influence of this extraordinary civilization.

But there's something missing in the story of Sanxingdui

that's puzzling me.

Why are we only finding out about this now?

Why do we know so much about the Shang,

and yet the people of Sanxingdui and this connection

to their beliefs and religion has vanished from history.

We now know that both the Shang and the people of Sanxingdui

had advanced technology, cities,

and beliefs that left their mark on Chinese culture.

But to search for clues that could tell us

why the story of the Shang has endured,

while that of Sanxingdui has been forgotten,

I'm heading once more to the Yellow River Valley

to explore some very special Shang discoveries

that could hold answers.

Wow!

The ancient shell of a turtle covered in tiny carvings.

I've heard all about these before,

and I never thought that I'd ever be so privileged

as to hold one in my hand.

This is evidence of another development

key to building any advanced civilization.

This is among the oldest writing anywhere on Earth.

And even though it's 3,000 years old,

it's a wonderful similarity to modern Chinese script.

Known as Jia Gu Wen, meaning oracle bone script,

these incredible artifacts contain messages

written by the Shang

seeking guidance and advice from the gods.

Jia Gu Wen was from 3,000 years ago.

It's the first complete Chinese writing system.

From this, Chinese characters continually evolve

throughout history.

Advanced technology, a powerful city,

and now, writing.

The oracle bones open a window into history,

reinforcing the place of the Shang

as China's great founding dynasty.

And it presents another challenge

for our new mystery civilization.

So the question is, is there any evidence back in Sanxingdui

that they had writing, too?

For decades,

archaeologists working at Sanxingdui

have been looking for signs of ancient writing.

And a breakthrough clue might have been discovered.

Douglas has been called in to Sanxingdui's conservation center

where archaeologists have been examining

an unusual bronze artifact

that carries traces of a very special material.

It looks like some sort of textile,

some sort of fabric.

Yes.

From what we see on this specific sample,

we can clearly tell this is made of woven material.

Combined with what we have analyzed so far,

we've come to the conclusion that this is silk.

A tiny fragment of silk.

Central to Chinese culture through the ages,

ever since being created in China 5,000 years ago,

silk was a luxurious preserve of emperors and nobility,

its technology a closely guarded secret for millennia.

Numerous traces of silk have been discovered at Sanxingdui.

But intriguingly, this fragment has a different weave

to that found in clothing.

And there's something else.

There's some, some substance there on the picture,

like here, these, it almost looks like mud.

Yes, it's a good observation.

We think it is possible a substance was applied

to the surface of the silk.

Guo Jianbo suspects this substance acted

as a protective coating.

Not in preparation for wearing, but for writing.

Because as well as turtle shells,

and before paper,

ancient Chinese cultures also wrote on silk.

It's a major breakthrough.

We've got evidence of bronze-making, of a city,

and now possibly evidence that they even had writing.

And all seemingly in isolation,

to the south of a mountain divide,

far from the Yellow River.

It seems the old view in which the Yellow River dominates

the story of the origins of China is wrong.

There was another version of history.

We just didn't know it.

But there's still one thing missing:

the name of our lost kingdom.

Hear the word Shang, and pretty much anyone in China

will immediately think of that great founding dynasty

of Chinese civilization,

while their southern equal has been lost.

The problem is, while the Shang wrote their own history,

only the suggestion of writing survives at Sanxingdui.

But could there be any record of their history in later texts?

Janice is scouring ancient legends,

stories written more than 1,000 years after Sanxingdui,

and in them is an intriguing reference.

I got several ancient texts here,

so one of them mentioned the fish bird king, Yu Fu.

Remember the golden staff discovered at Sanxingdui?

With depictions of a fish, a bird,

and what could be the head of a king complete with crown.

Might this be connected to Janice's lead?

If so, then it's a massive clue, because in Janice's text,

the legendary Yu Fu is said to have ruled

a people called the Shu.

Could they be our mystery civilization?

Douglas is picking up the trail,

heading into the remote Qinling Mountains

in search of the Shu.

This is getting extremely steep and treacherous

and twisty and narrow the further I go up here.

This precarious ancient trail is part of an entire network

of routes that snake through the Qinling Mountains,

and I'm here because of their name.

These amazing ancient pathways are known as the Shudao,

which translates to the Shu roads.

Built in the 4th century BCE,

these tracks are some of the oldest evidence

of the mysterious Shu Kingdom,

said to have once ruled southern China's Sichuan Basin.

Their construction was an amazing feat.

It was once assumed the Qinling Mountains

that stretch 1,000 miles from east to west were impenetrable.

Part of ranges that cut China in two,

dividing ancient communities, even entire civilizations,

to the north and south.

But these roads show the Shu found ways

to cross this perilous barrier.

Alright, so I'm here.

This is the Shudao road, and you can see all of these

other dozens of Shudao roads snaking through the mountains.

It's really amazing.

Thought to stretch for around 2,500 miles,

they show that the Shu established connections

with the lands of the Yellow River

to the north.

But in trying to find out if they were our lost kingdom,

there's a problem.

These roads date to 1,000 years after Sanxingdui.

But supposing the Shu did exist earlier,

could they also have breached the mountains back then

and be known to the Shang?

Janice has been studying scans of the Shang oracle bones,

and in them there's a symbol that looks familiar.

This character in the oracle bones

with a big eye and a curly tail in the bottom,

this is really like a worm.

Based on the shape of a silkworm,

experts believe it bears a striking resemblance

to a character still in use today.

And this modern character refers to the Shu.

This could mean that the Shang were writing about the Shu

on their oracle bones,

suggesting the Shu really did exist more than 3,000 years ago;

the time of our lost kingdom.

But is there any physical evidence

that could link the Shu to Sanxingdui itself?

Perhaps the answer has literally been staring us in the face

from the start.

These amazing bronzes have always confounded experts,

because they seem so different to everything we know.

But that uniqueness might be the very thing

that we're searching for.

Because we might be able to connect these

directly with the Shu.

Scouring more ancient legends, Janice has found another clue.

In text, it mentions the first king of Shu, Cancong.

So that means "silkworm bush."

The legends suggest that the first Shu king was named

after something we know was important in Sanxingdui culture.

And there's something else:

a crucial description of the king's appearance.

Here has something really interesting.

So this text mentioned the first Shu king has protruding eyes.

That reference to protruding eyes is so specific,

you can't help but think about the bronze heads of Sanxingdui,

and especially the biggest of them all.

These unique cylindrical eyes were perplexing.

But now at last they could have a remarkable explanation.

Because Chinese experts suspect

that this is a depiction of the king, Cancong himself.

And if that's the case, then this is physical evidence

of an amazing advanced civilization

that developed here in Sichuan.

All the evidence now points to a stunning conclusion:

that the people of Sanxingdui were indeed the Shu.

And that the Shang knew of them, 3,000 years ago.

But just how powerful were they?

A lesser kingdom to the south?

Or true equals of the mighty Shang themselves?

I'm hoping my tech team will have an answer.

The Yellow River Valley and its mighty Shang Dynasty

has long dominated the story of the origins of ancient China.

But across the mountains far to the south,

another long-forgotten kingdom has been revealed: the Shu.

Like the Shang, they had advanced technology

and possibly even writing.

But did their city match up to that

of their celebrated northern neighbors?

Our initial scans detected signs of massive city walls.

To help us make sense of them,

we've been joined by Sanxingdui lead archaeologist, Qiao Gang,

whose excavations are revealing details

of what was once within the walls.

We found a large group

of residential buildings.

It's over 1,000 square meters.

And the style of construction

is quite special.

We suspect it might be palaces or temples

from the period of Sanxingdui.

Now, from our scans and Qiao's excavations,

we can rebuild this inner city as it once might have looked.

Qiao believes this ceremonial area was the beating heart

of the city in its earliest times.

But the ancient settlement didn't stop here.

The team has spotted more in the data.

I will show you something really special.

Analyzing the satellite imagery using infrared

reveals that just like the city of the Shang,

there are more walls, and they're much further out.

That's amazing!

So here you can see almost all the sections

of the city walls.

As the population continued to grow,

the city expanded,

eventually forming an overall layout of a bigger city

surrounding the smaller one.

So the great city of the Shu expanded over time.

A huge ring of outer walls

surrounding an area of 1.4 square miles,

the same as 160 Manhattan blocks.

For this period, that's a really big city.

Yes.

Then, studying the scans further,

something intriguing.

Within the walls,

faint signs of a long-lost ancient landscape:

a dried-up riverbed.

Just like the Yellow River,

this river would have been the lifeblood of the city.

But here, they made it part of the very fabric

of the Shu's capital.

From the data, suggestions that the Shu channeled the river

to create a network of moats and canals.

What's revealed is a vast and sophisticated ancient megacity,

the biggest ever discovered in all of southern China.

The magnificent capital of an amazing civilization.

My quest to investigate the mysterious people of Sanxingdui

has taken me from the great Yellow River

to the southern lowlands

and into the high mountain range that divides them.

And what I've witnessed is evidence

that's changing everything we thought we knew

about the origins of Chinese civilization.

We now know that Sanxingdui is a door

into a whole new era of ancient Chinese history,

opening up the world of southern China

and the Sichuan Basin,

giving these great people a name: the Shu.

This was a powerful and sophisticated civilization

with some of the most breathtaking bronzes

on the planet,

fantastically rare gold treasure,

new evidence of possible writing,

and a staggering capital,

cleverly engineered to harness its river.

Every new discovery at Sanxingdui reveals more

about this truly remarkable civilization

that's only now been given its rightful place

in the history of ancient China.

♪ ♪